Sporting News' NHL Finishers Series explores the many different ways hockey's finest goal-scorers exploit the tiny chinks in the armor of today’s defensive systems and goaltending. Connor McDavid, already arguably the world's most dynamic finisher, seemed like a great way to start.

Every great scorer has at least one elite weapon at his disposal. Connor McDavid has an arsenal.

He can snipe from distance. He tips with a deft touch. When he receives a lateral pass in close, he doesn’t miss. And when you devote every effort to containing him, he pulls off something like this.

Incredible. If there’s a way to prevent McDavid from getting a shot off and from making deadly passes like that, nobody has discovered it yet. There are a half-dozen reasons why he remains so hard to contain, but they all emerge from a common root: breathtaking speed.

Just how fast is he? The pass showcased above is one strong example: he’s able to jerk the defenders back and forth and around because he’s making every move at speeds they simply can’t process. Of course, there’s another goal from early this season that made his pure acceleration perfectly clear:

From picking up the puck deep in his own end to scoring from the edge of the crease takes him 5 seconds. What makes this even more impressive is the fact that two Flames begin this sequence much closer to their goal than he does. Look at the size of the gap he closes.

Even against a winded defender, making up roughly a 20-foot gap through the neutral zone is, frankly, astounding. Speed like that gets you high-quality chances slower players can only dream of.

Once you’re there, however, speed is not enough. Detroit’s Dylan Larkin may be objectively the fastest skater in the league. Montreal’s Paul Byron gets an impressive number of breakaways due to his fleet feet.

Neither of these players is Connor McDavid. Using deadly speed to its maximal advantage is very, very hard to do. McDavid has mastered it.

Slowing down and looking more closely at his impressive goal against the Flames, we start to get a sense of how he uses his speed and momentum to exploit goaltenders.

Once he’s established body position past the defender, he moves to a wide coasting stance. He’s moving so fast he doesn’t need more strides to keep ahead, and the wide stance protects the puck from last-second stick swipes. From this position, he’s also symmetrically balanced, giving him a wider selection of options. He can shift direction left or right, and his hands are free to move the puck equally well to either side.

Turning his lead foot left pulls him rapidly in that direction. A goaltender playing with any depth would have to start shifting his weight immediately to have any chance of meeting McDavid at the far post. Smith plays a very conservative depth, however, and does well to stand his ground.

Because McDavid is moving so quickly, he needs virtually no windup on his shot. The blandest of releases will send the puck quickly enough from that distance. As he does so, Smith is ready to drive into the butterfly, which is the right play for the situation. Unfortunately for him (and most goalies), the drop into the butterfly comes with an automatic lowering of the glove hand. Smith’s glove was initially positioned perfectly to catch the puck. Once he goes down, it drops out of the way, and McDavid scores.

You might assume McDavid got lucky here, in that Smith moved himself out of the way. I’m here to show you that’s a poor assumption. This goal was remarkable, certainly, but it’s actually a version of a move that McDavid uses very intentionally, with some frequency.

Watch him victimize goaltender Frederik Andersen.

Notice anything familiar? Though this goal is missing a sprint from his own end, the components of the finish are precisely the same.

Let’s break it down:

Moving at an impressive clip, McDavid gets into his wide coasting stance, defying the Leafs’ defender and giving himself more options. As he turns his foot to change direction, Andersen shifts his weight for a move right. As the shot is released, Andersen has gone down to seal the bottom, with right-side momentum. He actually slides out of the way of the puck just as it passes him, and moves his glove down, like Smith did, out of the puck’s path.

McDavid didn’t shoot for empty net. He shot at the goaltender, knowing his speed and deception would lure him out of the way. If there isn’t already a “McDavid Move,” I’m submitting that one as a top contender. Not many players in the world have the rare combination of speed and hands to pull this off once, let alone on a regular basis.

Of course, identifying one method McDavid uses to score isn’t going to slow him down. As soon as you defend against one kind of attack, he chooses from among the many options his speed gives him to burn you from another angle.

Reimer caught this shot and still lost the game because he was moving backward so quickly he ended up in the net with the puck. McDavid’s speed gave him, like Andersen, Smith, and countless others to come, a choice between several no-win situations.